A Murder In Parlor Harbor

by Arno B. Zimmer

When Patchett hung up with the Governor, he was trembling, horrified by the public humiliation he was about to face but it seemed almost inconsequential when he thought of his inevitable confrontation with the matriarch. She was so accustomed to manipulating circumstances to her advantage that the news of his forced leave of absence would be devastating. The Governor had even hinted that his resignation would be necessary if he had any hope of avoiding a very public misconduct investigation. Patchett didn’t see it yet but Miss Henrietta would quickly look beyond the immediate tarnishing of the family name and focus on the destruction of her dream to put a Patchett in the governor’s mansion. Time had run out on the matriarch and she would have to watch as her grandson was turned back into “The Oz”.

  ***

  Meacham headed to the cottage after the meeting with Judge Rozelle. He was going to be cautious but could no longer wait to share the good news with Woody, Gwen and Jerry. Later, he would stop by the Inn to update Busbee. The celebration was muted and as feelings of relief sunk in, the room became eerily quiet. Then, Meacham remembered to reveal that Nellie Birdsong was their anonymous tipster who just happened to be working in the sheriff’s office for the summer. Woody and Jerry were star struck and agreed that she would have to be invited to the cottage for dinner once Woody was officially cleared.

  ***

  After leaving Judge Rozelle’s chambers later that afternoon, Grimsley strutted into Parlor Harbor State Bank with a decided bounce in his step. He walked past the swinging gate in front of a flustered Miss Pettebone. She stood up and called after him, reciting some bank policy governing unescorted visitors. Grimsley could see Earl Melmotte through the glass partition gazing out the window. He tapped his breast pocket and smiled when he felt the official court document.

  As Grimsley was escorting Melmotte past the horrified Miss Pettebone, investigators from the D.A.’s office arrived to seize bank records. Melmotte was shaken to the very core of his being and was so unnerved that he couldn’t pick up the telephone to dial his attorney. He would need more than a few dry martinis to calm his nerves. The money from Reisman had put a dent in his debts but he needed more time to stave off some of his most importunate creditors. It would take a while for Melmotte to appreciate that his money woes were only going to get worse and they were the least of his problems. And he certainly wouldn’t be playing polo in Palm Beach anytime soon, if ever again.

  ***

  After the Judge’s news sunk in, Meacham left everyone at the cottage in a festive mood. As he drove the short distance into town, he was thinking about Fogarty’s comment about the Mexicans seen around the Clintock house the previous day and decided to stop by Pappy’s. Buzz was off so he described for the manager the Mexican busboy he had seen the last time he interviewed the bartender. “I guess he was Mexican. Can’t be sure but I know who you’re talking about. He came in on time, worked hard, never complained and, you’re right, had a constant smile on his face. But he didn’t show up yesterday and didn’t come in today. I called the number on his application over in Port Ryan but it turned out not to be a working number” the manager concluded, scratching his head. Meacham walked out of Pappy’s chewing on this latest bit of information. A piece of the puzzle? Maybe not. Billy Meacham had learned over the years that some aspects of a case never came into focus. He had long ago resigned himself to this immutable fact of police work.

  ***

  Rudy Gantz spent the night in the Parlor Harbor jail cell where Woody Meacham had been locked up only days earlier. Before the lights went out, Meacham stopped by and told him about the fate of the entire Clintock family and the gruesome manner in which they died. Rudy looked stone-faced and the blood drained from his face. He knew immediately that Meacham was not inventing a horrific story to make him talk. It just wasn’t his style. For Meacham’s part, he wanted Gantz to have something to ponder as the dark hours slowly crept by.

  With the Clintocks dead, the redhead had now lost his protective shield. After his release from Strathmore, he had once again come to rely on their unswerving loyalty as well as their reassuring physical presence. Now, he was virtually naked before the world.

  Staring at the ceiling, Rudy understood clearly that wherever he went, he would not be safe. He started to construct a story that would put him in the most sympathetic light as the dupe of a clever, mesmerizing Canadian who he had met in prison. Of course, it was mostly true but Rudy saw it differently, merely as a clever ploy to secure leniency and a reduced sentence. It never crossed his mind that he might have bigger problems waiting for him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The End Game

  To add to the previous day’s woes at the Patchett compound, the morning paper over in Port Ryan carried a bombshell story, quoting an anonymous source with access to the state crime lab report in the Birdsong murder case. Apparently, the knife found at Pritchard Cottage contained no human blood and the report also confirmed that the red stains on the blade were animal blood – or as the writer opined with some journalistic levity, the remnants of someone’s medium rare steak dinner. Whoever provided the scoop did not trust the owners of the Parlor Harbor paper to report the news but it spread like wildfire throughout the town nonetheless.

  When Sheriff Grimsley was asked to comment for the record, he declined but did offer a newsworthy item on a related matter, namely that Ned Taggart had disappeared and his reliability as a witness against Woody Meacham was dubious at best.

  Opinion in Parlor Harbor rapidly turned against the D.A. who chose to hole up at the Patchett compound after his leave of absence was announced. Some wag at Pappy’s called him a “supercilious sycophant” and the alliterative moniker quickly caught on. Others, who had been reluctant to openly mock him after his appointment as D.A., resurrected “The Oz.”

  Miss Henrietta had repeatedly called the governor’s office but was unable to get past his handlers. A woman with overweening pride, she reluctantly concluded that an extended tour of Europe was in the best interest of the Patchett family. The next day, she booked passage on the R.M.S. Queen Elizabeth for what turned out to be one of its final voyages.

  ***

  Rudy Gantz had spent a good part of the previous evening in his cell rehearsing his story, struggling to stay consistent. When he sat down with Meacham that morning, he laid out the entire drug scheme, starting with his recruitment by Reisman while they were still at Strathmore. He then described their meeting at Devil’s Corner in Parlor City a few months later, suggesting that Reisman has pressured him to join his enterprise. To bolster his veracity and appear magnanimous, he even exonerated Benny Mars by stating that the bar owner had lost his nerve and declined to participate in Rudy’s latest enterprise even before he was asked. Rudy felt good about his story, smugly confident that even Meacham would be impressed. He had thought about expressing his sorrow about Woody’s pending murder trial but concluded that it would not be well received by Meacham.

  When Rudy finished, Meacham smiled and left the room. Rudy was initially dumbfounded that Meacham made no comment and hadn’t asked him a single question, finally concluding that his rendition of events must have been impressive.

  By design, Grimsley took over the interview for the portion involving Earl Melmotte. Rudy was vague and could only recall meeting with the banker once. However, he did repeat what Reisman had told him, namely that the drug money went into an account at the bank and then was immediately wired to an island whose name Rudy couldn’t remember. Reisman informed Rudy that they were paying Melmotte what he called a “transfer fee” but was never told how much.

  Grimsley got up to leave and, looking fierce-eyed at Rudy, couldn’t resist saying, “Quite a partnership you signed on for. You put up the money for the boat and then your partner controls all the cash that comes in. Hell, you don’t even know where the money is and you damn well won’t be getting your hands on any of it. My guess is that Reisman has moved it someplace else already. You got played for a fool, Gantz, a first-class dupe.
” Grimsley felt his contempt and disgust for Gantz getting the better of him and left the interrogation room before his urge to throttle the redhead got the best of him. He knew that his reaction was at least partly due to anger with himself for his singular, dogged pursuit of Woody Meacham. In that sense, he experienced a modicum of expiation as he left the room.

  “I got heated, Billy, and called him a few choice names. You may want to give it a few minutes before going back in. How can a jackass like that be so arrogant?” said Grimsley as he stood with Meacham in the hallway. “He hasn’t changed a bit, Harold, just hardened over the years so it may take some time to break him down. Let’s continue the good cop, bad copy routine. It will throw him off stride. When this is all over with, I’ll regale you with some stories about his earliest criminal escapades. Then, you will understand how deluded he is.”

  Rudy was burning over Grimsley’s insults, not because he believed they were true but because someone actually thought that he was a fool and wasn’t constrained from saying it. Waiting for Meacham to come back in, he decided that he would complain about his treatment by the sheriff in the belief that it would somehow engender some superseding camaraderie between two natives of Parlor City.

  Rudy was anxious to speak with Meacham again, to portray himself not as a dupe but rather as a victim of a clever charlatan. He stared at the door, eager for it to open. When it did, he was churlish with the deputy who escorted him back to his cell.

  Meacham and Grimsley were in no hurry to accommodate the whims of Rudy Gantz. They were waiting for someone to arrive from New York City and had gone out to lunch.

  ***

  During the hiatus, Rudy sat in his cell and brooded, picturing another stretch at Strathmore, longer than the first one - unless he could somehow minimize his role in the drug operation. He had a jumble of half-baked strategies floating in his head, some of which were contradictory. He started to fear that he had already revealed too much.

  What if he were to position himself as an investor in Reisman’s operation, more like a silent partner, who left all of the financial and operational details to the Canadian? What if he portrayed himself as a tragic figure manipulated by a devious con man, a foreigner no less, dating back to their incarceration at Strathmore? Sure, he would say that Reisman even fleeced him of the money left to him by his recently-deceased parents while he was still in mourning. He would be a humble, cooperative witness and might even use his unappealing physical attributes to garner sympathy with the jury and the judge. Thinking back on how Grimsley had just taunted him, he hoped they would capture that bastard Reisman and planned to ask Meacham if they were getting cooperation from Canadian authorities. He even thought about demanding that Hap MacQuarrie buy back his interest in the boat. Pathetic Rudy Gantz. His head was scrambled with ideas and the more he tried to frame them into a believable story, the more inchoate they became.

  ***

  That afternoon, Meacham resumed the questioning of Rudy Gantz. The redhead turned petulant when Meacham was dismissive of his complaint about Grimsley so he decided to hold off on playing the dubious victim card. When Meacham asked if had left anything out that morning, Rudy got whiny. He insisted that he had been thorough and couldn’t understand what Meacham expected him to add. Sure, he had left out the humiliating moment when Reisman berated him in front of the Clintocks but Meacham didn’t need to know about it. Even if it helped his argument that he was manipulated by Reisman, it was too revealing.

  “I am pretty much convinced that what you told me this morning is true – up to a point. But you omitted a few key events, didn’t you Rudy?” Meacham asked calmly. Rudy feigned surprise but Meacham’s benign, almost sympathetic tone made him nervous. Rudy scowled, knitted his brow and contorted his face but said nothing.

  Meacham stared at Gantz with a disappointed look and then continued. “You said you were going to cooperate, Rudy. When do you plan to come clean and tell us everything? I haven’t heard a word about Ralph Birdsong or Brad Drebek. How is it that your involvement with them slipped your mind?”

  Rudy’s mind was racing and he went pale. What could Meacham know about his dealings with them? Only Reisman and the Clintocks knew about it and they certainly weren’t talking. Rudy still wanted to appear cooperative so he suppressed his instinct to lash out and managed to say, almost obsequiously, “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the Drebek name but, of course, Birdsong was all over the newspaper. Hey, we pushed a lot of drugs. Sure, I guess they could have been customers.” Rudy shrugged and looked at Meacham with a sheepish, quizzical expression, as if to say “sorry, I can’t be of more help.”

  Suddenly, the door opened and Grimsley came into the room followed by Buzz Bigelow. “Oh, sorry Chief, I thought this room was vacant. We’ll go next door.” The bartender and Rudy stared at each other. It was only for a few seconds and then the bartender was gone.

  Meacham stepped into the hallway and purposefully left the door ajar so that Rudy could hear the indistinct whispering than ensued. In a matter of seconds, he was back in the room and turned back to Rudy with a smile on his face. “Sorry about that interruption. His name is Buzz. He’s a bartender over at Pappy’s. I had a chance to speak with him a few times, Rudy, and he tells me he never forgets a face. People around Pappy’s say it’s true. Anyway, he will swear that he saw you in Pappy’s with Birdsong and Drebek just a few days before the murder. Does that jog your memory?”

  Rudy’s mind was whirling. Sure, he was at Pappy’s with them but what did that prove? More importantly, what else did Meacham know and how much should he admit? He finally blurted out, “Oh yeah, some college boys wanted some drugs for some sort of war protest that they were going to attend. I probably arranged it – just slipped my mind, ok?”

  “Hmm, you sell drugs to a guy who is stabbed to death a few days later. It’s all over the news and somehow the meeting at Pappy’s slipped your mind? I’m not buying it but okay, we’ll let it go for now. What about the night Birdsong was murdered, Rudy – where were you? Is there a chance you were at Pappy’s?” asked Meacham, remembering Woody’s comment about seeing a shadowy figure with red hair in the crowd near the bar.

  “No, I don’t think so. Oh wait, I remember now, me and my boys were over in Port Ryan that night, planning for the next day.” Rudy felt good that this story couldn’t be contradicted – at least by the Clintocks. Then, Meacham smiled again and Rudy was quickly un-nerved, wondering why the Chief seemed to be enjoying himself.

  There was a knock at the door and Meacham went to open it. A bespectacled, middle-aged man wearing a dark, three-piece suit and a stolid expression came into the room carrying a black satchel. He shook hands with Meacham who pointed to Rudy and said, “Here’s our man, Doctor.”

  Rudy shrunk back. His immediate thought was that they were going to give him one of those truth serum shots he had seen it in a war movie, where the captured soldier starts talking and gives away military secrets.

  Meacham interrupted Rudy’s frantic speculation. “This is Dr. Garrett Vreeland, Rudy. He’s what they call a forensic odontologist, sort of a dentist with detective-like talents may be the best way to describe him. He’s here under a court order to make impressions of your teeth. I never knew doctors like this even existed until a few days ago. They’re sort of dental detectives and can uncover lots of secrets about people by examining their teeth. Now, there’s no reason for you to be alarmed, Rudy. You’re not going to feel any pain, isn’t that right Doctor?” Meacham looked at Vreeland for affirmation and the dentist pinched up his mouth and nodded his assent.

  Vreeland took off his suit jacket and handed it to Meacham as if he were his assistant. He then opened his satchel and plucked out a neatly-folded white medical jacket, slowly putting it on and buttoning it up to the top. All the time, Rudy’s panic was increasing but Vreeland didn’t seem to notice. Meacham watched this little drama, highly amused. Following a ritual that he must have used numerous times, Vreeland intoned, “I am going t
o make an impression of your upper and lower jaws. You must remain completely still while I apply the compound. Most people don’t understand the scientific terms so I will simply tell you that it feels like silly putty in your mouth. The process will only take a few minutes and we will be finished – as long as you cooperate. Now, you might gag a little so please control your impulses.”

  Rudy was flustered. He wanted to spend more time alone with Meacham, explain how he had been used by Reisman, possibly make a deal. He wished he had said how bad he felt for Woody when he had the chance earlier. But now, the bartender had complicated things and some dentist was about to put silly putty in his mouth. They had nothing on him, he was sure of that. The bloody blade was in the lake and had probably floated miles away by now, maybe all the way to Canada. The other knife, the one buried behind the cottage, wasn’t that the primary evidence against Meacham’s son? So, what was this bizarre court order to check out his teeth? What did it have to do with drug dealing or murder? Rudy didn’t understand and it was starting to alarm him but he was afraid to ask.

  Rudy hadn’t been to the dentist in years except for the time at Strathmore when some dental school student was brought in and yanked out one of his rotting molars. He was embarrassed to have anyone inspecting his teeth but knew that it was useless to resist. Meacham stepped back and stood by the door. He was smiling again and it was getting to Rudy. In a few minutes, the procedure was completed and Rudy felt a strange sensation as Vreeland gently lifted the upper and lower molds from his mouth.

  Rudy looked at Meacham as Vreeland carefully packed the molds into specially-designed, protective cases. “I’m remembering some more information about those college boys that might be helpful” Rudy said, almost beseechingly, but unsure what he should reveal. All his rehearsing from the night before had vanished into thin air.

  “That’s okay, Rudy. I think you’ve already given us more evidence today than you can possibly imagine” Meacham said, eyeing the black satchel. “Now, just try to be patient for a little longer and someone will be in to take you back to your cell. We’ll talk again soon.”